Former President Donald Trump has edged a slim lead over President Joe Biden in a presidential election forecast.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is set to face incumbent Biden in November, and polls have so far shown that the results of the 2020 White House rematch will be tight, with the pair statistically tied or holding only marginal leads in a number of surveys. But there are signs Trump is making gains ahead of polling day. According to a Sunday projection by polling aggregator 538, Trump wins 51 times out of 100 simulations while Biden wins 49 times out of 100.
This marks a change from April, when the 538 project launched. Then, it projected that Biden would win 58 times out of 100 and Trump would win 41 times out of 100. This lead continued until last week, when Biden was projected to win the race 53 times out of 100 to Trump's 47 times out of 100.
Meanwhile, forecasts like these are significant as the election will likely be determined by a handful of key swing states, as the Electoral College system awards each state a certain number of votes based on population.
A presidential candidate must secure 270 electoral votes for victory, and winning the national popular vote does not guarantee success.
However, with less than five months to go until polling day, it is still too early to call the results of the election and other polls suggest Biden is beating his Republican challenger.
An Echelon Insights poll published last week, for instance, showed Biden gaining ground. The poll of 1,013 voters, conducted between June 10 and June 12, found that if a presidential election were held today, 48 percent would vote for Biden while 47 percent would vote for Trump.
Biden and Trump are also tied in Virginia, a state which has not backed a Republican for president since George W. Bush in 2004.Speaking to Newsweek, Heath Brown, an associate professor of public policy at City University of New York, said polling was still "evenly split."
"I think all the polling for the last six months suggests the country has been and will remain evenly split," he said. "Slight ups and downs for either candidate in any given poll are largely washed out by the next set of polls.
"My conclusion, is Biden and Trump have just about equal support right now, with a sizable portion of the country undecided about who they support and whether they'll turn out on Election Day."
On June 27, Biden and Trump are set to square off in Atlanta for the first of two scheduled debates ahead of the general election on November 5.
Until then, 538 will rerun its forecast simulator every day between now and November's election and will update it depending on the latest data.
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